Today’s hero – Nicholas Crace, 83, kidney donor!

Posted by Wendy on May 17, 2012 No comments

In an age where our elderly are too often not given the respect they deserve one man in England has shown that even at the ripe old age of 83 a person can be useful and do great things for other people.

Nicholas Crace from Overton in Hampshire, at the age of 83, has donated one of his kidney’s to a complete stranger. In glowing good health, doctors advised him he could live the rest of his life perfectly well on one kidney and so this wonderful man gave the most selfless gift of all to another person…the gift of life.

I can see his reasoning; he has looked after himself well in life, he is in his eighties and his organs are like those of a healthy man in his forties…why not share one kidney with someone who needs it now instead of waiting until the inevitable? what an incredible gift and what amazing selflessness. What an example. Those who think that perfectly good organs that could save lives should go with them into their graves should consider what this fine man has done – and he has done it while still alive and kicking.

I think he deserves a medal for this.

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.

On Mother’s Day – to mothers who have lost a child.

Posted by Wendy on May 14, 2012 4 comments

Erma Bombeck wrote this column on Mother’s Day 1995, just a year before her death. It is a beautiful piece dedicated to those women who will never get an answer to the only question they have…

If you’re looking for an answer this Mother’s Day on why God reclaimed your child, I don’t know. I only know that thousands of mothers out there today desperately need an answer as to why they were permitted to go through the elation of carrying a child and then to lose it to miscarriage, accident, violence, disease or drugs.

Motherhood isn’t just a series of contractions, it’s a state of mind. From the moment we know life is inside us, we feel a responsibility to protect and defend that human being. It’s a promise we can’t keep.

We beat ourselves to death over that pledge. “If I hadn’t worked through the eighth month.” “If I had taken him to the doctor when he had a fever.” “If I hadn’t let him use the car that night.” “If I hadn’t been so naive, I’d have noticed he was on drugs.” The longer I live, the more convinced I become that surviving changes us. After the bitterness, the anger, the guilt and the despair are tempered by time, we look at life differently.

While I was writing my book ‘I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise’, I talked with mothers who had lost a child to cancer. Every single one said death gave their lives new meaning and purpose. And who do you think prepared them for the rough, lonely road they had to travel? Their dying child. They pointed their mothers toward the future and told them to keep going. The children had already accepted what their mothers were fighting to reject.

The children in that bombed-out nursery in Oklahoma City have touched more lives than they will ever know. Workers who had probably given their kids a mechanical pat on the head without thinking that morning are making calls home during the day to their children to say “I love you.”

This may seem like a strange Mother’s Day column on a day when joy and life abound for the millions of mothers throughout the country.But it’s also a day of appreciation and respect. I can think of no mothers who deserve it more than those who had to give a child back.

In the face of adversity, we are not permitted to ask, “Why me?”….You can ask, but you wont get an answer. Maybe you are the instrument who is left behind to perpetuate the life that was lost and appreciate the time you had with it.

The late Gilda Radner summed it up well: “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned the hard way that some poems don’t rhyme and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what is going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”

 

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.

56 Up – shows us how growing up used to be.

Posted by Wendy on May 11, 2012 No comments

I have been following the ‘Up’ series since 28 Up – basically because it was never really promoted much on Australian television when I was a kid and the society that those kids came from was much different from the non-classed Australian society I grew up in. But like most, I became hooked on the series because the people in it were just a few years older than myself and we all grew up at a time when childhood was still relatively free of the issues that exist today.

Like young tear-away Tony from the East End, I played in the outdoors and my neighbourhood – no fear of child abductors or paedophiles lurking around the playground back then…even though they did exist. Television was something you might have watched after dinner before bed and dad chose the show and he had the final say. We all left school being able to read, write and add up – no games consoles, no mobile phones, no reality television to become addicted to.

56 Up - Jackie, Sue and Lyn

What I found interesting about the ‘Up’ kids is that they all seemed to follow the path in life that was available to them – those higher up the social ladder fulfilled the expectations of them, those on the lower scale felt their way along their paths because on that level nothing is handed to you…you have to go out and earn it, make it happen with what you have.

It will be interesting to see how happy they have all turned out – if John is less miserable nowadays than he always seemed to be. If the bloke who went to Australia as a young man is finally content with his life having grown up in a children’s home – he always seemed unhappy deep down. And we all want to catch with Neil – he more than anything represents how tenuous our grip on life really is and how much we all are at the mercy of circumstances. I hope it’s all good news :)

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.